5 ms·

Layoffs aren't a problem. There will be a new generation of young freshman whom greatest desire is to be a video game developer. The non unionized guys will wor

by neves 12y ago

Layoffs aren't a problem. There will be a new generation of young freshman whom greatest desire is to be a video game developer. The non unionized guys will work 140 hours a week. Have a great salary for someone so young. And get their layoff when they get older and can't stand more this.

EdwardDiego 12y ago
Are there unions in game dev? In my country, IT professionals are very hostile to unions, but then our labour laws are less imbalanced between employer and employee (IMO) than America's.
- bittermang 12y ago
  I have not encountered any. With all of the Hollywood Accounting that goes on at the publisher level to ensure a development team gets fucked out of as many royalties as possible, there is a lot the games industry could learn from the Unionization of Hollywood.
  - trentmb 12y ago
    > there is a lot the games industry could learn from the Unionization of Hollywood. That they can't use the keyboard, cuz the union says only the typists can use the keyboard?
    - bittermang 12y ago
      Specifically, how Hollywood has a writers guild, an actors guild. Games could see an artists union, a programmers union, a game design union.
- ekianjo 12y ago
  There are certainly unions in France at least and this is a place where many video games are developed (well, less now than before). Unions are mandatory in France when your company has more than 50 employees, so companies like Ubi Soft most certainly have unions at least in France, but my guess is they expanded in the US, Canada and Asia precisely for that reason: to lower the risk of having unions in a single development center.
  - aikah 12y ago
    I dont even think it's still a french company,I think it moved to Montréal because you cant really create a Gaming Business in France and exploit workers to the hell.
    - ekianjo 12y ago
      Well Ubi Soft headquarters are still technically in Montreuil, next to Paris. While it's true they have offices all around the world now.
watwut 12y ago
Game developers does not have great salary for someone young, they still could get more elsewhere. You take pay cut to develop games.
- bittermang 12y ago
  This cannot be overstated. You really do get the shaft to live out your dream. The only people making the real money are the ones deciding who gets laid off.
  - zura 12y ago
    Does being a cog in the wheel in some monstrous companies like EA corresponds to dream of making games?
    - bittermang 12y ago
      Every muscle pulls the weight. There's a joy in seeing your work inside of a world. Knowing that, in the sum of parts that is the entire game experience, you made that potted plant. Or you decided it goes right there. Or you wrote the routine that makes it tip over and break when you bump in to it. No one will ever know, or even necessarily think about all of the little things that go in to the game. But you know. Plus you get to go to E3. It's like setting foot in the holy land. You could only watch the coverage from afar before, as an outsider. But now here you are, standing at the precipice and waiting for the gates to open. You made it. You deserve to be here. You're a developer, and this is your three day exclusive industry only arcade parlor full of games no one else can play yet. It doesn't matter if you worked on Modern Warfare or Farmville. On those three magical days in LA, we're all equal. Brothers and sisters, all here because we love this industry, and all the things we are able to do.
      - Paul_S 12y ago
        Most game devs never get to go to ANY conference, let alone E3. You make it sound like everyone gets a free flight to LA and a tourist visa.
bittermang 12y ago
Spoken like a person who has never so much as sniffed what the world is like in "AAA Game Development". Imagine what a product like Facebook or Mac OS would look like, if after every major release, 2/3rds or the entire team were laid off, and a fresh batch of bright eager young talent was put in the chairs at a cheaper wage than the last crop, unaware of the doom riding on the horizon. Do you know why every EA franchise seems to tank over time, until it's eventually killed? Because the people who made it originally are gone, replaced by a bunch of guys who are told "Make it work like the last one, but the market says it needs to be more action-y, so do that too." The people on the new team weren't there the first time around, and so they wind up making a faded copy of a game trying to imitate the predecessor. Eventually the game loses all of the heart, passion, and competency that made it a great game in the first place. In the software world, we know the benefit of building a strong team. People learn to work with each other, and people learn to work with the product, knowing it inside and out. They're able to make the product the best it can be. That doesn't seem to matter in the world of games to publishers. They see the people who build the games as disposable fodder, because as you say there will always be a new generation whose greatest desire is to be a game developer. Sure. Publishers don't see layoffs as a problem. It's become part of their business model by now. But from where I sit, you can only disenfranchise so many people, until you've killed your golden goose who makes building the product for you possible in the first place. And this is directly why we've seen the rise of indie games. Every time they piss one of us off, we slowly start to realize we don't need them anymore. -- A laid of game developer, with a foreclosed home.
- chc 12y ago
  I think you might have misunderstood neves' post. You seem to largely agree with it.
  - bittermang 12y ago
    "Layoffs aren't a problem." They are _the_ problem. See Dead Space's decline until it was given the ax. See the constant eb and tide of Need for Speed, as they play developer hot potato with the title. See the rambling incoherent mess that are Medal of Honor and Battlefield, the original marquee warfare titles, that don't even know what kind of game they want to try to imitate anymore because they forgot what they were. In my mind and experience, these can all be directly attributed to EA's policy of killing everyone at the end of the dev cycle. It's like every sequel is started from scratch, when you have to spin the new team up every time. But that's ok, because "when they get older and can't stand more this" they'll move on, right? You mean six to twenty-four months older, depending on when they joined the project. If they're lucky, they can parlay that experience in to signing on with another developer. But the constant layoffs mean that not only is your pool of competition for the job full of young bucks fresh out of Guildhall and Full Sail, but also full of desperate people just like you. People who felt safe enough in their so called tenure to dare to do things like try to start families or own homes, to live a life to accompany that dream. Lay offs and the ideal of living the dream of games are creating an over-saturation in the market that is going to have some dire consequences down the road. We already see this today in real time, as the money continues to consolidate at the top, and developers are left dead in the ditch. Terminal Reality. Lucas Arts. Vigil. Time Gate. Studios with long rich histories, full of talented people who made a lot of great games, many of whom I knew... gone. Stand here and tell me lay offs are not a problem, when I've had to listen to their pleas of what they're going to do now with no job, and a baby on the way. When another great game is taken from the world, because the focus groups didn't respond the right way, so you all can line up at the unemployment line. Stories and worlds we'll never be able to enjoy, because someone decided that they had enough of trying to live this way, and the dream died with their career. Explain to me how that is not going to have a long and damaging impact on this industry, when the people who make fun aren't having fun anymore.

by neves 12y ago

EdwardDiego 12y ago

Are there unions in game dev? In my country, IT professionals are very hostile to unions, but then our labour laws are less imbalanced between employer and employee (IMO) than America's.

bittermang 12y ago
I have not encountered any. With all of the Hollywood Accounting that goes on at the publisher level to ensure a development team gets fucked out of as many royalties as possible, there is a lot the games industry could learn from the Unionization of Hollywood.
- trentmb 12y ago
  > there is a lot the games industry could learn from the Unionization of Hollywood. That they can't use the keyboard, cuz the union says only the typists can use the keyboard?
  - bittermang 12y ago
    Specifically, how Hollywood has a writers guild, an actors guild. Games could see an artists union, a programmers union, a game design union.
ekianjo 12y ago
There are certainly unions in France at least and this is a place where many video games are developed (well, less now than before). Unions are mandatory in France when your company has more than 50 employees, so companies like Ubi Soft most certainly have unions at least in France, but my guess is they expanded in the US, Canada and Asia precisely for that reason: to lower the risk of having unions in a single development center.
- aikah 12y ago
  I dont even think it's still a french company,I think it moved to Montréal because you cant really create a Gaming Business in France and exploit workers to the hell.
  - ekianjo 12y ago
    Well Ubi Soft headquarters are still technically in Montreuil, next to Paris. While it's true they have offices all around the world now.

watwut 12y ago

Game developers does not have great salary for someone young, they still could get more elsewhere. You take pay cut to develop games.

bittermang 12y ago
This cannot be overstated. You really do get the shaft to live out your dream. The only people making the real money are the ones deciding who gets laid off.
- zura 12y ago
  Does being a cog in the wheel in some monstrous companies like EA corresponds to dream of making games?
  - bittermang 12y ago
    Every muscle pulls the weight. There's a joy in seeing your work inside of a world. Knowing that, in the sum of parts that is the entire game experience, you made that potted plant. Or you decided it goes right there. Or you wrote the routine that makes it tip over and break when you bump in to it. No one will ever know, or even necessarily think about all of the little things that go in to the game. But you know. Plus you get to go to E3. It's like setting foot in the holy land. You could only watch the coverage from afar before, as an outsider. But now here you are, standing at the precipice and waiting for the gates to open. You made it. You deserve to be here. You're a developer, and this is your three day exclusive industry only arcade parlor full of games no one else can play yet. It doesn't matter if you worked on Modern Warfare or Farmville. On those three magical days in LA, we're all equal. Brothers and sisters, all here because we love this industry, and all the things we are able to do.
    - Paul_S 12y ago
      Most game devs never get to go to ANY conference, let alone E3. You make it sound like everyone gets a free flight to LA and a tourist visa.

bittermang 12y ago

Spoken like a person who has never so much as sniffed what the world is like in "AAA Game Development". Imagine what a product like Facebook or Mac OS would look like, if after every major release, 2/3rds or the entire team were laid off, and a fresh batch of bright eager young talent was put in the chairs at a cheaper wage than the last crop, unaware of the doom riding on the horizon. Do you know why every EA franchise seems to tank over time, until it's eventually killed? Because the people who made it originally are gone, replaced by a bunch of guys who are told "Make it work like the last one, but the market says it needs to be more action-y, so do that too." The people on the new team weren't there the first time around, and so they wind up making a faded copy of a game trying to imitate the predecessor. Eventually the game loses all of the heart, passion, and competency that made it a great game in the first place. In the software world, we know the benefit of building a strong team. People learn to work with each other, and people learn to work with the product, knowing it inside and out. They're able to make the product the best it can be. That doesn't seem to matter in the world of games to publishers. They see the people who build the games as disposable fodder, because as you say there will always be a new generation whose greatest desire is to be a game developer. Sure. Publishers don't see layoffs as a problem. It's become part of their business model by now. But from where I sit, you can only disenfranchise so many people, until you've killed your golden goose who makes building the product for you possible in the first place. And this is directly why we've seen the rise of indie games. Every time they piss one of us off, we slowly start to realize we don't need them anymore. -- A laid of game developer, with a foreclosed home.

chc 12y ago
I think you might have misunderstood neves' post. You seem to largely agree with it.
- bittermang 12y ago
  "Layoffs aren't a problem." They are _the_ problem. See Dead Space's decline until it was given the ax. See the constant eb and tide of Need for Speed, as they play developer hot potato with the title. See the rambling incoherent mess that are Medal of Honor and Battlefield, the original marquee warfare titles, that don't even know what kind of game they want to try to imitate anymore because they forgot what they were. In my mind and experience, these can all be directly attributed to EA's policy of killing everyone at the end of the dev cycle. It's like every sequel is started from scratch, when you have to spin the new team up every time. But that's ok, because "when they get older and can't stand more this" they'll move on, right? You mean six to twenty-four months older, depending on when they joined the project. If they're lucky, they can parlay that experience in to signing on with another developer. But the constant layoffs mean that not only is your pool of competition for the job full of young bucks fresh out of Guildhall and Full Sail, but also full of desperate people just like you. People who felt safe enough in their so called tenure to dare to do things like try to start families or own homes, to live a life to accompany that dream. Lay offs and the ideal of living the dream of games are creating an over-saturation in the market that is going to have some dire consequences down the road. We already see this today in real time, as the money continues to consolidate at the top, and developers are left dead in the ditch. Terminal Reality. Lucas Arts. Vigil. Time Gate. Studios with long rich histories, full of talented people who made a lot of great games, many of whom I knew... gone. Stand here and tell me lay offs are not a problem, when I've had to listen to their pleas of what they're going to do now with no job, and a baby on the way. When another great game is taken from the world, because the focus groups didn't respond the right way, so you all can line up at the unemployment line. Stories and worlds we'll never be able to enjoy, because someone decided that they had enough of trying to live this way, and the dream died with their career. Explain to me how that is not going to have a long and damaging impact on this industry, when the people who make fun aren't having fun anymore.